


firelight & bread

by Ashling



Category: Emily of New Moon - L. M. Montgomery
Genre: Chocolate Box Exchange 2020 Late Treat, Domestic Fluff, F/M, Married Couple, No Plot/Plotless, i love it when married people are in loveeeeeeeee, you guys i am soft
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-20
Updated: 2020-03-20
Packaged: 2021-02-28 18:28:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 554
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23221732
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ashling/pseuds/Ashling
Summary: Emily turns twenty-seven during her first visit to Europe. The best birthday gift in all of Paris can't be bought, but Teddy has it.
Relationships: Teddy Kent/Emily Byrd Starr
Comments: 8
Kudos: 16
Collections: Chocolate Box - Round 5





	firelight & bread

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Minkel23](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Minkel23/gifts).



Teddy didn't mind. He understood the unexpected, inexorable, elfin lure of sudden inspiration, so earlier that night, in the midst of a fantastic birthday party thrown for Emily by Teddy's old friend the Therouxes, she had glanced across the room at him, and he knew. He knew that the walk home would not be an idle, satisfied saunter, and he knew it would certainly not include a detour along the Seine. His Emily would not be wholly his again until well into the night. But at that brief glance, her eyes alight, he broke out into a smile, anyways. Couldn't help himself.

The walk home was just as swift and silent as he predicted. As soon as Emily shut the apartment door and got her shoes off, she made a beeline straight for the bed, took off her birthday dress, and left it in a gorgeous heap of purple and blue. Teddy took his time. He sorted through their mail (another massive envelope for Emily from Ilse; she and Perry must have had another battle royale lately, or else gotten pregnant—the Millers being anything but boring); he helped himself to some bread and butter; he hung up his suit jacket and her dress in the closet; and he tended to the fire in the fireplace until it roared and leapt. Only once he felt settled did he turn his attention to Emily.

She was hunched over her notebook, just a tumble of blue-black hair and a slip of white silk and the arch of one pale shoulder, vivid against the blood red of the sofa, and Teddy took a moment to commit the sight to memory. The artist in him enjoyed it tremendously, almost as much as the husband in him did.

Picking up a pencil and his sketchbook from the mantelpiece, he sat down next to her, not touching, but close, putting up his feet on the coffee table and laying his left arm along the back of the sofa. Emily moved at once, in one fluid motion, as if this were a practiced dance between them: she twisted until her back was towards him, then pushed herself towards him with her feet braced on the arm of the sofa, till she fit snugly into his side. He slipped his left arm around her waist, propped his sketchbook up against the sofa arm, and started drawing. 

At some point, Teddy yawned so enormously that it startled the both of them into laughter. He put his sketchbook aside and internally debated whether or not to get up. For one thing, he could change into pajamas, and for another, he still hadn't given Emily her birthday present. It was a copy of the first book she'd ever written, professionally bound in green and gold, with a page of illustrations for each chapter, and it had taken a significant amount of scheming and sneaking around to get it made without arousing her suspicions, so he was looking forward to giving it to her very much. He thought she might cry when she opened it, and he was rather hoping she would. He wondered if that made him a poor husband. It was hard to feel guilty when Emily was so warm and comfortable against him, and eventually he just gave up and closed his eyes. 


End file.
